The New Realities of Data Protection

Data protection has never been more important, or more challenging. Organizations are generating and storing more data than ever and the volume just keeps getting bigger and bigger. With the broader acceptance of virtualization and cloud computing, the challenges are only getting more intense.

So what do you do about backup in this environment and how do you incorporate technologies that will help you to “future proof” your IT infrastructures? Those were among the questions addressed this week at an informal dinner gathering of about 20 IT professionals in Boston. The event was sponsored by Quantum and featured the storage expert Greg Schulz as a keynote speaker.

Schulz, founder and senior advisor at The Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO), told the gathering that it’s time to start thinking in terms of modernizing your data protection schemes. In order to rethink your strategy, you have to set the proper stage and really understand your data: How much are you generating, when are you generating it, how long are you keeping it, how much of it is in physical machines, how much is virtual, how does the cloud fit into your overall strategy.

“When it comes to data protection, you want to make sure you are shifting your focus to the source of the problem,” Schulz said. “If you’re driving a car and you keep getting flat tires, instead of constantly changing the tires, you want to get to the root of the problem and find out why and how it’s happening.”

The idea, Schulz said, is to “move upstream” to find the source of the problem and then “come downstream” to apply the right technology solutions, whether they are deduplication, compression, tiering, archiving. There are a wide range of potential solutions, several of which were described in presentations from Quantum executives. Quantum also discussed some interesting use cases involving key customers.

What are some of those solutions and use cases? And how do you plan for the journey to modernizing your backup? Tune in next week when we will post our second update following the next informal dinner meeting in Chicago, which will take place on Monday evening. Other upcoming events in the series are scheduled for Palo Alto, Houston and New York. For details go to Virtualization, Cloud and the New Realities For Data Protection.